Author name: Steven Edwards

Simon MacMichael Thu, Dec 30, 2021

Extinction Rebellion @ExtinctionR
“It’s the most profound issue in the history of civilisation and it requires a complete transformation of everything we do from top to bottom.” You’re calling for system change @LeoDiCaprio but you’re not going to get it by voting.

Given the scale of threat and the size of the organisations they are fighting, climate activists must move beyond civil disobedience to property destruction and even sabotage, says controversial campaigner Andreas Malm

Cameron Allen December 19 2021
This article is part of the Financial Times free schools access programme. Details/registration here. Students were asked to write on how transport changes for either food or people might help the world to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.Most people believe the future of transport is electric vehicles. Their uptake has been increasing rapidly and governments are starting to create policies to encourage their use. But they are a cop-out which avoids difficult decisions by governments.
From a political standpoint, EVs are very easy to implement. They require no change in culture, comparatively little investment from central government and use existing road infrastructure. Most importantly, their adoption makes governments seem environmentally friendly. 

Eric Carlson Is it time to change the face of parking in the U.S.?
“It’s no secret in the development world that parking lots are just land banks just waiting to be turned into something else…”
Eric Scharnhorst, Data Scientist at Parking Mill
One byproduct of the time the United States has spent in quarantine are the empty roads, parking lots, and parking garages. All of a sudden, people are driving, parking, and moving around less.
One of the few benefits of this crisis is that cities once clogged by pollution have seen clear skies and better air. Places choked with traffic and road rage are now wide open and generally less busy. Once full parking lots in urban areas are now just strange, empty swaths of asphalt gleaming in the sun.
An extreme example of this is one particular city in India, where residents saw mountains in the distance that some lifelong residents of the area had never seen before. The Himalayan mountain range had been obscured for nearly 30 years by pollution:

Reports from the frontline of the war on motorists have made distressing reading for some vehicle owners. With low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) surviving both physical and media assault, improved protections for pedestrians and cyclists in a revised Highway Code will weaken still further, they discover, a right to road domination long understood to be, if not divinely ordained, something even better: unassailable.

unevenearth.org
by André Gorz
The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages  from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return.

Daniel Moser @_dmoser
“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to  cycle and he will realise fishing is stupid and boring” ~ Desmond Tutu

Alex Dyer Aug 24, 2019
Most people are probably aware that cars are bad for us and the environment. Given how much we have come to use them, perhaps most aren’t aware just how very bad they are.
It is not uncommon to see well-meaning environmental initiatives proclaim their effectiveness by comparing their performance to the ‘number of cars taken off the road’. Like this is some kind of official unit of measurement.
Every time this is used it does my head in: Why do they not just take cars off the road instead? They will only be trying to compare one or two aspects, usually air pollution or emissions. But it is car blind to ignore the many other benefits of reducing car use.

news.leicester.gov.uk
Published on Thursday, December 16, 2021
PEOPLE are being asked to give their views in a public consultation over a proposed Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) which could help fund a radical overhaul and long-term modernisation of the city’s public transport, cycling and walking networks.
Over the summer Leicester City Council carried out initial consultations into a possible scheme, and now more detailed plans for the WPL have been published.
An extensive 12-week public consultation has now been launched, giving people and employers the chance to find out more details about the proposed WPL and how it would work, and to comment on the scheme. It runs from December 16, 2021 until March 13, 2022.